Limbaugh Show Bleeding Money

Premiere Networks is the organization that Rush Limbaugh actually works for. They are the company that distributes his radio show to small stations around the country to be aired. They make their money by selling expensive national advertisements, which the stations that carry the show are obligated to run. After running the national ads for Premiere, the local stations then run some local ads to make money for themselves. Until a couple of weeks ago, it was a lucrative arrangement for everyone concerned.

As the chart above shows, Limbaugh's unwarranted, abusive, and defamatory attacks on a young college student (and on women in general) has thrown a big monkey wrench in the business of hate radio. Decent people across the country have risen up and demanded the companies supporting Rush by advertising on his show stop it immediately or be subjected to boycotts of their products -- and that pressure has become so great that the advertisers are deserting Limbaugh's show in droves. It has now climbed to more than 150 companies that have refused to allow their ads to be aired on Limbaugh's show.

It has become so bad that Premiere Networks has informed the local radio stations that for two weeks there will be no breaks for national ads (the weeks beginning on March 12th and March 19th). They didn't give a reason, but the reason would seem obvious. They don't have any ads to run in those breaks (and even some charities have refused to allow free public service announcements to run on Limbaugh's show), and they don't want the show surrounded by "dead air" (radio silence). That would make the flight of advertisers away from the show even more obvious.

And it has gotten even worse for Limbaugh. Not only has he hurt his own show, but he's also hurt the shows of his fellow hate radio talkers (like Hannity, Savage, and Beck). Many of the advertisers have pulled their ads from not just Limbaugh's show, but from all of the hate radio shows.

Limbaugh has made a half-hearted apology (actually a non-apology apology), and I'm sure he and Premiere Networks are hoping the furor will die down in a couple of weeks, the advertisers will come back, and things will return to normal. There's a good chance that won't happen though. The demographic that most advertisers want is the 18 to 54 age group (especially women), and there aren't too many of those in his audience. He has mostly older white men as listeners, so the advertisers may just look elsewhere to spend their advertising dollars -- where they can get more bang for their buck.

And a new poll shows that the public didn't think much of Limbaugh's "apology" anyway. A Rasmussen Poll showed that only 29% of the public thinks Limbaugh's apology was sincere, while 53% thought it was not. In other words, he's not out of the hole he dug for himself yet -- and he may not get out of it.